I also mentioned his son Calvin, a bright lad of nine, named for the Great Ripken himself. I don’t know when I’ve seen such model fathering as that young professor’s. He and his son are great pals, but hardly a moment passed when the boy wasn’t testing new ideas on dad, and dad wasn’t doing gentle, creative teaching.

Calvin had never seen farm animals before and was rapt over the sheep and chickens. One afternoon father and son pulled up lawn chairs by the chicken yard and spend a couple of hours observing and commenting to one another. (I can picture them yet out there, side by side.) The chicks, now fully feathered and two months old, scamper all over the yard. The young cockerels, feeling their oats, conduct repeated two-bird stand-offs, trying to stare each other down and then jumping at one another’s faces. Calvin loved that.

As I watched his excitement, I thought of that of a 12-year-old who visited us last year. That boy, raised in light-polluted Los Angeles, had never seen a sky blanketed with stars; standing in our dark back yard was a revelation for him. As was, the next day, his confronting and finally bringing himself to touch the soft noses of two donkeys also visiting us. Nature and animals; kids crave exposure to both.

Lack of such exposure probably caused the inside-out reaction of an adult city woman who visited some years ago. She stopped by to see our pigs _ just as I was dumping a five-gallon bucket of slop into their trough.

True to their nature, the three beasts plunged their heads into the mess, hardly pausing to breathe as they tried to out-eat each other. In fact, the only breaks in gorging came when one would squeal in outrage at being pushed aside, and even try to chomp the ear of the offender.

The lady finally couldn’t contain her own sense of outrage. "Well!" she said. "No wonder they call them pigs! That’s just the way they’re acting!"

Her statement stopped me dead until I realized that to her, "pig" meant a human glutton. Since these animals were acting like such a person, "pig" was a good name to call them. That woman needed to spend more time in the country.

Two other local families, both new to being swineherds, had their own pig adventure last week.

The Pullyblanks and the Buchingers live up Fly Creek Valley, within a quarter mile of each other. Both couples are members, with Anne and me, of a pig partnership raising three animals at the Pullyblank farm. In fact, the Buchingers own the other half of Anne’s and my pig. (The division will be stem to stern, but I’m not sure who gets port and who gets starboard.)

The three pigs, now up to about 180 pounds each, live in the Pullyblank barn, with egress into a good-sized fenced yard surrounded by electric wire. Well, last week, two circumstances met that made for a pig break: Tom Pullyblank was out of pig feed and had to drive to Cooperstown for it. In his absence, the electric fence failed.

The always hungry pigs soon discovered they could push their way out of the yard, and in minutes they were heading south, down Route 26, foraging for food. They actually got as far as the Buchingers’, where Christian, the family’s resourceful son, lured them with food into the dogs’ pen.

Meanwhile, the alarm had gone out, and Kristen Pullyblank and John Buchinger rushed home from work.

Kristen, a skilled horsewoman, made a harness from some rope and actually began walking the first pig home. She might have made it, but a car sped by, spooked the pig, and made it fall into the roadside ditch. There it raised a shriek as only a pig can _ a sound as shatteringly loud as rending metal. But the sound brought immediate help.

Right between Buchingers and Pullyblanks lives one of our kindest-hearted families, the Hribars.

They always show one of country people’s great strengths, a readiness to offer help when it’s needed. When the pig shrieked, Dad Bill Hribar came at once to Kristen’s aid, but with gentlemanly tact.

"Need some help with that pig?" he asked. Kristen, her big pig upended in the ditch, allowed that she did. Soon all the Hribars were out of their house. Sons Billy and Jeremiah joined their dad, as did a visiting cousin. Mother Donna headed for their pick-up and drove it down to the roadside.

Nobody had to tell Hribars how to handle a big, frightened pig.

The two sons grabbed it by the back trotters, and Dad got hold of its ears. Ears? Oh, yes. If someone had grabbed the front trotters, that pig would have bitten a half moon out of his arm.

Between them, the Hribars hoisted the pig and slung it into the back of the pick-up. They did the same with the other two, and then Donna drove the shrieking lot down to the Pullyblanks’ and a happy ending, back in the pen. For Tom Pullyblank had arrived with the feed, and soon the pigs had snouts buried in their trough.

God bless the Hribars, I say. Their matter-of-fact goodness ought to inspire the rest of us.

Too bad there wasn’t time to drive our young guest Calvin up the valley and introduce him to those pigs. But he did have another animal here, one that completely took his heart. It was Blue. Calvin bonded as tightly with him as young Jeff did with the TV Lassie.

The boy was with Blue every spare moment, and just before he and his dad left, he was crouched under our kitchen table, arms around the dog.

"Goodbye, Blue!" he said sadly. "I’ll email you!" I hope he does.

Read about Jim Atwell’s new book, "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell.com).